Therapists' Experience of Working with Interpreters in NHS settings: Drawing Upon a Psychoanalytic Theoretical Framework to Contextualize the Findings of an IPA Study

Abstract

NHS therapists are required to work with interpreters. Therapy with an interpreter may take longer and aspects of the work may be challenging. Surveys of NHS mental health staff, particularly those working in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services, indicate that they are experiencing burn-out, low morale, and increasing stress and depression as a result of ever-increasing targets and workload demands. This study aimed to gain an understanding of the impact of the context of therapy on the experiences of therapists in the NHS of working with interpreters. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 qualified therapists working within an IAPT or secondary care psychology service from one NHS Trust. The verbal data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology. The key finding of the study was that participants’ experience of their organizational context (whether supportive or pressured and demanding) appeared to drive how they related to the interpreter. Previous literature has applied a psychoanalytic framework to understanding organizational, group and individual responses to stress in healthcare settings, including IAPT. Following the initial analysis, aspects of psychoanalytic theory were used to contextualize the findings. Epistemological and ethical tensions in making links to theoretical frameworks within an IPA study are acknowledged and discussed.